Terry Edwards v. Lorie Davis, Director

Terry D. Edwards, a Texas state prisoner on death row who is scheduled for execution on January 26, 2017, filed a Rule 60(b) motion and requests for stays of execution in federal district court. The district court concluded that Edwards’s Rule 60(b)(6) motion constituted a second-or-successive habeas petition because it sought to advance new claims and so it transferred Edwards’s motion and the requests to stay his execution to this court. On the narrow issue of whether the alleged abandonment of Edwards by his federally appointed habeas counsel constitutes a defect in the integrity of the…